


The Feeling Is Mutual

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 18:30:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3144233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buri and Wyldon are a disaster waiting to happen that never quite happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Feeling Is Mutual

            “You stupid no-good horse,” Buri growled, staring down the horse Thayet’s pretty Tortallan prince had given her, which was a very lovely and very uncooperative bay that had apparently been bred from Alanna’s Moonlight. “Want to stay in your stables and mope all year? I don’t bloody care. Over-bred, finicking, dainty-“

 

            “If the horse is not doing what you tell it to,” a cool voice cut in, “the chances are that you are doing something wrong, not the horse. Abuse is inappropriate.”

 

            Buri, trained throughout her lifetime to kill first and ask questions later, whirled around and drew her dagger, holding it ready to put it through the throat of the speaker. This probably was not conducive to friendly relations with the man, who turned out to be tall, with brown eyes, a rather haughty cast to clean features unclouded by the close-cropped beards Raoul and Prince Jonathan favoured, thick dark hair, and a look on his face like he’d trodden in a pool of vomit by accident.

 

Buri glowered silently, and hoped that it would lead him to back off. Most Tortallan courtiers took a step or two back when she stared at them; some made their excuses and hurried off to the other end of the palace. She’d even heard herself referred to as ‘Princess Thayet’s guard-dog’, which pleased her, but upset Thayet.

 

            However, this man was clearly not impressed. “If you cannot handle the animal, your master ought to be informed. Who-“

 

            “ _Master_?” Buri squeaked, catching on to the man’s assumptions and going an alarming shade of angry red.

 

            He raised an eyebrow. “If you’re not a servant, then I do... heartily... apologise.”

 

            Buri, who hadn’t known until know that it was possible to infuse a simple sentence with so much doubtful disdain, was not soothed. “I’m not a groom, arsehole!” she barked, shattering every precept about being nice to Tortallans Thayet had attempted to instil in her. “I’m Princess Thayet’s bodyguard! This is _my cursed horse_!”

 

            “Oh,” the man said, looking as if he had been unfavourably surprised. “I see. I apologise.” He folded his arms. “I assume you are unaccustomed to dealing with horses.”

 

            Buri bit her tongue hard on a stream of foul-mouthed K’miri. “I am not unaccustomed to dealing with horses,” she hissed. “I am _K’miri_. We _live and breathe_ horses. What I’m not used to is spoiled animals that won’t stir foot out of their stables and haven’t seen rough ground in their lives!”

 

            Now the man looked affronted. “Thunder is _not_ spoiled,” he said, and walked closer, holding out a hand to the horse, which whickered and nosed his palm; he pulled a piece of carrot from his pocket and offered it to the creature, which took it happily. “He will deal with you better when he knows you better. I suggest you spend more time getting acquainted with him before you start hurling insults.”

 

            He turned and walked away, back to his own beautifully behaved grey mare in the stable next door. Buri seethed.

 

***

             

            The door into Raoul’s rooms shot open and hit the wall with a bang. Raoul covered his eyes and groaned. “Sweet Mithros, Gary, shut up,” he said rather thickly.

 

            Buri glanced around the darkened room, noted the closed curtains, advanced hour and smell of alcohol, and emitted a disgusted noise. “Why do you drink more than you can hold?” she demanded, searched out the offending bottle by smell rather than by sight and emptied it out of the window.

 

            “Buri!” Raoul protested, and collapsed back onto the bed with his hand clapped over his eyes. “ _Aagh_!”

 

            “Serve you right,” Buri retorted unfeelingly and tied back the drapes she had just thrust open, letting the noonday sun pour into a thoroughly disorganised and stuffy room. “When did you last wash, let alone shave?”

 

            “If you’ll shut up and go away,” Raoul promised, burying his head in the pillows and cocooning himself in blankets and sheets, “I’ll wash, I’ll shave, I’ll go and drill on the practice courts, I’ll do whatever you want, but please, Buri, for the love of Mithros, _stop talking_. And you owe me a bottle of wine.”

 

            Buri inhaled sharply and considered him, then moved silently over to another corner of the room, picked up the ewer, moved silently back over to Raoul’s bedside, divested him of blankets, sheets and pillows with one vicious yank, and emptied the cold water directly onto his head. Raoul exploded upwards with a bellow of rage. “ _Buriram Tourakom_!”

 

            “Yes?” Buri said mock-sweetly. “Would you like me to go and get Alanna and tell her you need dragging onto the practice courts and belting into shape? Because she will do it. And you will deserve it. And actually, you need it.”

 

            He glared at her. “I’m wearing a loincloth.”

 

            “I noticed.”

 

            “It’s not proper attire in which to receive a lady.”  


            “Yeah, and?” Buri put her hands on her hips.

 

            Raoul groaned and rubbed his eyes. “You remind me of my mother when you do that, and not in a good way. Look, get me a cup of water, I feel like something’s died in my mouth, and then I’ll do whatever it is you came to make me do. All right?”

 

            “Fine,” Buri said, and grabbed an earthenware cup off Raoul’s desk, which was overflowing with books and papers on tactics and strategy, as well as requisition lists and other highly important things (although Buri reserved judgement on the half-eaten and vaguely mouldy plate of cold meat and cheese.) “Don’t even think about going back to sleep when I’m gone, or I’ll castrate you.”

 

            “As if you could,” Raoul called after her.

 

            “Don’t try me!” Buri bawled over her shoulder, making her way down into the small courtyard Raoul’s rooms overlooked. There was a fountain there; she rinsed the cup and chucked the waste water into a bed of roses which would no doubt be the better for it, before filling it again and trudging back up to Raoul’s room. Much to her surprise, he was dressed and vaguely presentable, having run a comb through his hair. She held out the cup. “Water,” she said briefly.

 

            He took it, and sipped gratefully. “Thanks, Buri. What was it you wanted?”

 

            “What do you know,” Buri said deliberately, “about a stick-up-arse of a nobleman with dark hair and good taste in horses?”

 

            Raoul thought for a moment. “Wyldon of Cavall?”

 

            Buri shrugged.

 

            Raoul drained the cup. “It sounds like him. He’s not bad. Bit stiff, but a brilliant jouster, and he breeds horses and dogs.” He gestured at Buri. “He bred your horse. Thunder.”

 

            “ _He bred my_ -“

 

            “Bred your horse, yes, that’s right,” Raoul supplied helpfully. “You’ve gone puce, Buri. What’s wrong?”

 

            “Nothing,” Buri said through gritted teeth.

 

            “Go and take it out on an archery target,” Raoul recommended. “Wyldon’s about twenty-seven, I think. A good hunter, inherited Cavall last year, courting Vivenne of Carmine Tower very slowly, conservative, a good soldier, a decent man.” He shrugged. “There’s not much else to say.”

 

            Buri exhaled, and folded her arms, leaning against the bit of wall that was still chipped from last month’s ill-advised experiment with a cheap darts-board and throwing knives as darts. “He sounds pretty normal.”

 

            “That’s because he is,” Raoul said.

 

            “That means you forgot to mention the bit where he interferes with people going about their everyday business, takes them for servants and tells them they don’t know anything about horses,” she corrected him.

 

            Raoul eyed her carefully, then got up and clapped her bracingly on the shoulder. “Let’s get some breakfast,” he said. “I could eat one of those Carthaki oliphaunt things. Maybe you’ll feel better then.”

 

            “You mean lunch,” Buri muttered half-heartedly, but allowed herself to be propelled out of the room and down to the kitchens.

 

***

 

            “Goldenlake,” Wyldon of Cavall said, eyeing Buri in the flickering light of the torches augmenting the thin grey shine of dawn, “this is a boar hunt. It’s not a place for-“

 

            “I can talk for myself,” Buri growled.

 

            Wyldon inhaled sharply and glared at her. “I wasn’t implying-“

 

            “No brawls at this godsforsaken hour of the morning,” Douglass decreed, and waved a slightly motheaten teddy bear. “Lord Theodore disapproves.”

 

            “Shut up, Veldine,” Wyldon and Buri said in unison, still glowering hostilely at each other.

 

            “Knock it off, Douglass,” Raoul said more kindly, reaching out to pluck the teddy bear from his erstwhile squire and tuck it safely into a saddle bag. “Buri, Cavall isn’t actually out to get you. Wyldon, Buriram is bound and determined to hate you and you’re making it worse.”

 

            “I have a right to an opinion,” Wyldon said stiffly.

 

            “And Buri has a right to fight a duel with you and leave your guts all over the duelling ground,” Raoul retorted. “You notice she hasn’t yet? Good. Let’s get moving.”

 

***

 

            It was the work of a second to throw a knife across the Hall of Crowns and see it stick in the man-at-arms’ back with a wet thunk, red blood darkening the nameless man’s surcoat as he collapsed, his short sword clattering from his hands. It took even less time than that for the knight he had been about to cut down from behind to deal with his other opponent and whirl, sword flashing – and see his would-be murderer dead on the floor and give Buri a battle-mad, bloody grin and a sharp nod.

 

            Buri acknowledged the gesture, drew another knife, and kicked another man’s nose into his brain, cutting his throat to be certain. She immersed herself in the fight, relying on her instincts, and was almost glad that this had happened. It had been too quiet, and yet she had known, and Alanna had known, and Liam had known, and everyone in this gods-cursed palace who’d ever been near a battlefield had known, that something was going to happen. And now the copper bit had dropped, the other boot had fallen: now they all knew what was happening, now the final crisis had arrived. All they had to do was survive it, and Buri was good at surviving. It didn’t require her to give a thought to knotty problems, didn’t require her to second-guess herself, even when she did inexplicable things like save Wyldon of Cavall’s life.

 

She couldn’t have let the man-at-arms kill him, she told herself later, when she wondered why she stirred herself to defend a knight who not only thought she and Thayet were barbarians, but was perfectly capable of looking after himself.

 

She was surprised at her own actions, but not as surprised as she was when Cavall came up to her afterwards and thanked her stiffly.        

 

***

 

            “These are getting more frequent,” Raoul said softly to Buri, as the King’s Own spread out around the ruined village, digging graves, bringing bodies out into the open, looking for the missing and any sign of the bandits’ trail. “People are hungry. Last year’s harvest was very good, but this year’s has been destroyed almost completely, and see how little grows? Foraging will be difficult.”

 

            Buri nodded, tightness in her throat. Her fingers clenched at her reins, and Thunder snorted and shifted under her; she reached down absently and patted him. He was already wound up, smelling the thick, meaty scent of burnt flesh overlaid by damp, charred wood. At least the rain had put the fires out; rain was so rare in Sarain and so much rarer still in the highlands that if lowlanders set light to a K’miri village, it generally burned to the ground...

 

            “Buri. Buri.” Raoul shook her shoulder. “Are you all right? Is this...” He gestured hesitantly at the bandits’ handiwork. “Is this what it’s like? In Sarain? For the K’mir?”

 

            “No,” Buri managed, her windpipe several sizes too small to speak. “It’s worse. No-one comes to help us bury our dead. No-one comes to us with healers. And food. And help to rebuild.” She shook her head violently and slid off Thunder, handing the reins up to Raoul. “I’m going for a walk.”  


            “Take your bow,” Raoul said with resignation.

 

            Buri inhaled strongly, grabbed the item in question, and tramped away, a small, compact figure with suppressed rage and misery coming off her in waves. She searched the little village without knowing what she was looking for, walking down the main street, counting the bodies, inhaling the smell of destruction and death, hearing the sobs of the few who had fled far enough into the woods to go untouched. This winter would not be kind to them.

 

            She saw a man, a knight, kneeling in the mud by a small boy, and she stopped. After a moment, she identified the knight, who was carefully drying the boy’s face with a corner of his tunic, as Wyldon of Cavall. She went closer, and crouched down on her haunches by the man and the boy. The child turned a tearful face towards her.

 

            “This is Matten,” Wyldon said with calm gravity. “He has mislaid his mother, Tresa, his brother, Jensen, and his dog, Wolf.”

 

            Buri noted the boy’s dirty golden hair and thought about the woman with braided hair just that colour lying in the main street with an arrow through her stomach, and remembered the body of a sizeable dog, perhaps a wolf hybrid, she had seen just round the corner.

 

            “Matten, this is Buriram Tourakom. She comes from Sarain, in the far east, and she’s Princess Thayet’s bodyguard. Have you heard about Princess Thayet? They say she’s the most beautiful woman in all of Tortall,” Wyldon told the boy, still calm and level, even though he must have noticed the things she did.

 

            “She’s not as beautiful as my ma,” Matten announced.

 

            Buri cleared her throat and gritted her teeth for a moment, willing away tears. She left her mother a corpse before Queen Kalasin’s door. “No. You’re right. No-one is ever as beautiful as your mother.”

 

            “Naturally,” Wyldon said, and stood up, hoisting Matten to his hip. “Master Matten, may I suggest you return to the Palace with us? We will find your mother and Wolf if we can, but in the meantime you need food and rest, and I’m sure your mother would be glad to know you were safe.”

 

            Matten looked dubious.

 

            “It’ll be easier to find her that way,” Buri lied. “We’ll look after you. You have our word of honour.”

 

            Fleetingly, it occurred to her to wonder when she started speaking for Wyldon, but by then Wyldon was nodding solemnly and confirming her words. They took him to the Own and by common consent settled him on the front of Lord Wyldon’s horse, talking to a young, amiable corporal in the King’s Own who had wits enough to know the boy was now an orphan.

 

            “What will happen to him?” Buri demanded in an undertone.

 

            Lord Wyldon shrugged. “We’ll take him back to the palace, feed him, give him clean clothes. If there is not something he can do there, run errands, help in the stables or the kennels, I’ll take him back to Cavall, and there will assuredly be something for him there. Either way, I’ll ensure he learns to read, write and do sums; perhaps more, in the event he turns out to have an aptitude. He will do better there than he will here.”

 

            Buri nodded slowly, staring at him, her eyes level and measuring. “Most people wouldn’t go that far for just a boy.”

 

            “He’s not just a boy,” Lord Wyldon said tersely. “He’s a motherless child, and I gather from the villagers that his brother was the lad killed on the gate whose head was crushed. I have some sympathy.”

 

            Buri bit the inside of her cheek hard, felt her eyes burn and looked determinedly down at the toes of her boots. There was a long silence, in which Buri did not look up.

 

            “Lady Buriram, are you all right?”  
  
            “I have dust in my eyes.”

 

            “Ah. I see.”

 

***

 

            “So the trouble with rooting out nests of bandits is the closeness of the family network?” Buri asked, sipping at her goblet of wine and leaning against an ornamental table that was meant to hold gilded trays of delicacies, not the full weight of a compact, muscled young warrior in a dress she hated.

 

            Raoul nodded, and took a refill of the rich red wine from a passing page. “People are reluctant to hand over their closest relatives to the king’s axe. I mean, that’s understandable enough.”

 

            “So how-“

 

            “Lady Buriram,” Lord Wyldon said, appearing from nowhere. “May I have this dance?”

 

            Buri very nearly spilt her wine and stabbed him with the concealed knife she wasn’t supposed to have on her person. Happily for the success of the ball, she did neither. “- _What_ , Cavall? Have you gone _mad_?”

 

            “No,” Wyldon said, his tone taking on the familiar stiffness. “On the other hand, my Aunt Metrasine is about to introduce an unusually stupid cousin to me, with the intention of making me dance with her.”

 

            “I have three left feet,” Buri shrugged. Actually, she could dance fairly well, but the K’miri dances she knew and enjoyed were nothing like the milky, washed-out, falsely delicate and hideously complicated manoeuvres the Tortallans favoured, and Buri had trouble stopping herself from trying to lead the dance. “You’re better off with your cousin.”

 

            “Lady Buriram, I must respectfully disagree with you,” Wyldon said, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Aunt Metrasine wishes me to marry that cousin.”

 

            Buri was surprised enough to turn back to him. “But you’re betrothed.”

 

            “My aunt does not recognise the... validity of my betrothal,” Wyldon said through gritted teeth. “Neither does my sister. The amount of family pressure is no small irritant and will grow infinitely worse if I dance with my cousin. Lady Buriram, _yes or no_?”

 

            “Fine,” Buri sighed ungraciously, rolling her eyes and shoving her goblet into Raoul’s hand, whereupon he finished it off. “But if you end up with a broken toe, don’t come crying to me.”

 

            Lord Wyldon raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Would I dare?”

 

***

 

            “Buri. I thought I’d find you here.”

 

            Buri dropped her horse’s hoof and stood up to see who was talking to her, although she knew that honey-smooth, soothing voice as well as her own. “Thayet?” Her friend looked unusually serious; unusually especially for these days, when she always seemed to be glowing, quietly overjoyed. Buri looked her up and down. “I hope you weren’t planning on going riding in that dress.”

 

            Thayet glanced down at several yards of cascading maroon silk embroidered with running horses in black thread, their eyes glinting jet beads. “No, I was not. Look, Buri, we need to talk seriously.”

 

            Buri moved around Thunder and yanked on his leg. Obligingly, the horse raised its hoof. “Is this about Jonathan again?”

 

            Thayet winced. “ _No_. I’ve heard quite enough from you on that subject.”

 

            “I just think,” Buri said, scraping carefully, “that you came here to be a private citizen, yes? So you’re flying in the face of-“

 

            “I said I’d heard enough!” Thayet snapped. “I... need to talk to Alanna about that anyway.”

 

            “So go to the desert,” Buri said, putting down that hoof and moving further around Thunder. “Raoul’s been waxing lyrical about it, and not just when he’s pissed- which is too often, if you ask me. Go to the desert, talk to Alanna, Alanna will tell you what I told you, make up your godsdamned mind and th-“

 

            “Buri!” Thayet shouted. “This is not about me! This is about you and Lord Wyldon!”

 

            Buri considered this a sufficiently startling statement to stand up and give Thayet her full attention. “What about him? He’s still a pain in the arse, I’m just growing to tolerate him. I thought you wanted me to learn to get along with Tortallans.”

 

            Thayet shut her eyes and took a deep breath, something Buri suspected was only possible because Thayet had given the seamstress specific instructions to halve the amount of boning in her bodices. “I wanted you to get along with Tortallans, Buri. I didn’t want you to _seduce_ them.”

 

            Buri’s jaw dropped.

 

            “Especially,” Thayet said through gritted teeth, “not the _betrothed_ ones, Buri.”

 

            “Uh,” Buri said intelligently.

 

            “He’s going to marry Vivenne of Carmine Tower. Don’t tell me that had escaped your notice.”

 

            “I know,” Buri said, staring at Thayet. “She’s, er, nice? I like her. She’s a good rider to hounds and she’s got guts. Also, I don’t want to marry her betrothed at all. We would kill each other before the first week was out. When did I make _anyone_ think I wanted to marry _anyone_?”

 

            Thayet gave her an odd look. “You’ve been so much in his company. Going on the same hunts, reducing his dislocated shoulder, practising archery, you even _danced_ together, and Horse Lords help me, I thought it would be a dark day when I saw you on a dance-floor.”

 

            “But none of that was because I actually _liked_ him!” Buri exploded. “I go on the same hunts because Raoul goes on the same hunts! I wasn’t going to leave him with his shoulder dislocated when we were miles away from a healer and no-one else knew what to do! He asked me to dance because one of those stupid butterfly girls-“

 

            “Airheads chasing butterflies?” Thayet suggested, giving Buri much the same look as she would a cart that had hit a stone wall at full speed, and filling in one of Alanna’s favourite sayings.

 

            “Yes! Exactly! She wouldn’t leave him alone and her aunt was going to make him dance with her, and no-one else was close enough to ask!”

 

            There was a brief silence, and then Thayet sighed and shook her head. “Buri, I believe you, but no-one else will. They have you in bed with him already.”

 

            “What?” Buri yelped. “He’s ten years older than me _at least_!”

 

            “Twelve,” Thayet said grimly, wearing what Buri called her thinking face. “Buri, how would you like to come to the desert with me and stay a few months?”

 

            Buri stared at her, and thought about it. On the one hand, it would be a pain in the neck travelling all that way so soon after getting settled in a safe place, and Raoul said that acceptance of Jonathan as the Voice was grudging and resentful in a lot of tribes, making their territory downright dangerous. On the other, the Bazhir sounded like sensible people, free of the ridiculous pomp and glamour that surrounded the Court, and the stories Alanna and Raoul had told – especially the detailed descriptions of their beautiful horses Raoul had given – made her itch to go. And as a bonus, it would kill this stupid, embarrassing rumour about her and Cavall. Horse Lords, of all the ridiculous ideas...

 

            She shrugged, hiding from herself the fact that perhaps it wouldn’t be so ridiculous if he didn’t drive her up the wall. The man was attractive, clever, good with horses, and had got around to treating her like an equal now, if not like a friend. If he wasn’t so godsdamned annoying, he might be in with a chance. “All right.” And just to maintain normal behaviour and annoy Thayet, she added: “You and Jonathan are boring right now, anyway. I didn’t realise love made you dull.”

 

            Thayet let out an outraged squeak no-one else would ever have got out of her except perhaps her mother, playing parlour games in the bitter days of a Saren winter and cheating outrageously to wind up her daughter, grabbed the apple intended for Thunder, and threw it at Buri’s head. Accurately.

 

            Buri ducked, snickering. “Very proper, Your Nearly Majesty.”

 

            “Oh, shut up,” Thayet said, cheeks flaming. “He hasn’t proposed yet.”

 

***

 

            The little group of knights assembled in the courtyard, the Own rushing, swearing, and arming themselves around the men. Buri led Thunder up to the group, wrapped his reins around a post, and mounted up. In many respects, she looked like one of the enlisted men, wearing a jerkin with steel rings stitched into it and a band of leather around her neck, but the curious, brightly-coloured arm and finger guards she wore marked her out as different, as did the enamelled helmet and cuirass Jonathan and Thayet had given her for her birthday. She had been surprised how touched she was, actually: the pieces of armour were Raven Armoury make, the _best_ , and Thayet had taken a leading hand in the design, making sure it had more than a tinge of Hau Ma clan patterns to it. It made her feel good to wear it.

 

            She brushed her hand over the gleaming front of the cuirass and met Lord Wyldon’s eyes with a straightforward glare.

 

            Lord Wyldon raised an eyebrow, and fitted his own helmet over his head. “Good morning, Buriram.”

 

            Buri nodded, guardedly pleased that he hadn’t made a comment. This wasn’t the first bandit hunt she’d taken part in, and he had carefully refrained from remarking on it since the day they went out to Woodsward and he brought back an orphaned boy, but she still expected something from him. She got nothing: just his bland, stern, perfect-knight face.

 

            “Hey, Buri!” Sacherell called, plainly surprised to see her. “Why are you here?”

 

            Buri’s head turned sharply, and her eyes narrowed. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

 

            Sacherell gestured vaguely. Buri had noticed that he was the brains of the pair when it came to his distinctly co-dependent relationship with Douglass, but considering that Douglass frequently behaved like he was off his head on rainbow dream, and the less said about Lord Theodore the better, that wasn’t saying much. “Well... not a knight of the Crown? You could be doing something sensible instead, like sleeping.”

 

            “This is sensible,” Buri said flatly.

 

            Sacherell rolled his eyes. “Oh Mithros, another warrior stoic, and I thought we were over-supplied with Cavall and Alanna and that Stone Mountain one, what’s his name, the conservative.”

 

            “Burchard,” Wyldon said, his voice cool and impersonal, giving Buri time to stop seething irrationally. “Wellam, your girth is too loose.”

 

            “It is not!” Sacherell protested, leaning down and peering at his saddle-girth in the flickering torchlight.

 

            Wyldon raised one cold eyebrow, and pointedly stopped paying attention to the younger knight.

 

            “Ride out!” Raoul bellowed from somewhere close by, and Buri nudged Thunder with the heel of her boot. He moved forward with alacrity, taking up a place next to Wyldon and his roan destrier, and Buri settled comfortably into the saddle as Raoul lifted his arm and signalled for the column to move at a trot.

 

            The bandits wouldn’t know what had hit them, Buri promised herself, thinking of Matten, who worked for Wyldon now and spent an hour learning his letters every day; she checked on him whenever she could, paid him to run pointless errands for her and gave him sweets she claimed not to need, but nothing erased the shadow in his eyes. She wondered if there was a shadow like it in her own, and ran her fingers over the stamped leather of her armguard, blindly following the horse in front of her.

 

            If she could find a way to make it so, there would be no more motherless children. Not today.

           

             

            They were lucky. The bandits didn’t move fast enough, not suspecting that the village’s hedgewitch had seen their dawn arrival last night while scrying for tomorrow’s storms and had sent a rider to the King, and they were an inexperienced band, moving too slowly and still in the village when the Own thundered in, surrounding it and pouring inside to kill the bandits.

 

            The men of the Own and the knights were howling challenges, war-cries, screaming their allegiance to Tortall and King Jonathan. Buri let her instincts and her training take over, charging Thunder into the village and straight into a thick knot of bandits trying to put up a ragged defence against the arriving soldiers. She drew her sword and laid about her, cutting, killing, and there was blood on the sword as she cut down into the skull of a bandit trying to pull her from Thunder, and Thunder screamed and reared, dinner-plate sized metal-shod hooves tumbling through the air, crushing everything that came within their path. And the knot was gone, and Buri pushed further into the village, feeling her teeth bared and battle-madness racing through her veins, and the bandits were fleeing, and she pursued, children’s screams and women’s sobbing from the village pushing her on, the insidious crackling of flames telling her that the bandits were setting light to the thatch as they went-

 

            She felt a sudden prickle in the back of her neck, as if someone was watching her, and she wheeled Thunder, lifting her small, round shield, searching instinctively for the danger-

 

            It was like looking into the eyes of a shadow. She saw the man grin and let fly an arrow nocked to his bow, felt it find its mark in her shoulder, biting just at the edge of the cuirass, slipping through the leather jerkin, punching deep into her flesh.

 

            And Buri swayed in the saddle and the world was sucked away from her, suddenly distant and colourless, voices calling to her out-shouted by the rushing roar in her ears, like the sea on the rocks of Pirate’s Swoop, and feeling emptiness, and nothingness, and her sword, Raoul gave it to her, taught her how Tortallans used it, it fell from her fingers, slipping between them like sand at the seaside. And she knew that she should be angry with herself that it had fallen, but she didn’t know why.

 

            Thunder whinnied, high and frantic, as she slumped over his neck, and then something brought Buri back down to earth with  sharp thud, a body colliding hard with hers, a hand grabbing her reins and an arm going round her back and chest and steadying her, supporting her, and her head fell back hard against a metal shoulder.

 

            “I dropped my sword,” Buri said, high and breathless, “I dropped,” and she gasped and keened before she could stop herself, pain hitting her like a cannonball to the stomach.

 

            “I know,” Wyldon said, cool as ever. “Wellam will pick it up. It will be a relief to him to have something to do. Can you sit straight in your saddle?”

 

            “I,” Buri gasped, and was ashamed of herself for the tears starting in her eyes, but, but, this _hurt_.

 

            “No,” Wyldon answered for her, and he turned their horses and began to walk them back, back to the other end of the village. She saw but did not register the archer on the muddy ground, three arrows piercing him, his neck broken from his fall from the roof, and she looked at her own shoulder, where all the pain seemed to be coming from, and saw an arrow sticking out of her own body, fletching dark and spotted with her own blood. There was a lot of blood. It stained the jerkin, a red so deep it was almost black.

 

            “Arrow,” she said, surprised.

 

            “Yes, you were hit by an arrow,” Wyldon agreed.

 

            “Stupid,” she muttered.

 

            “Careless, certainly. But it would have been far worse if you had not turned to meet it.” Wyldon reached the end of the village and stopped, calling sharply on Raoul to hold her steady while he dismounted, and Buri looked down as big, familiar hands took hold of her and Raoul looked up at her, brown eyes snapping with anxiety and anger.

 

            “I got hit,” she told him.

 

            He managed a wavering smile. “I can see that,” he said, and Wyldon came round to her side and issued a number of sharp instructions that ended with them lifting her off Thunder, who was shifting anxiously. She reached out and spoke to him in K’miri, soft, soothing words slurred, as if she could not understand her own language any more.

 

            “What’s that?” Raoul demanded.

 

            In K’miri, Buri said he knew perfectly well what it was, he’d travelled with her for months and ought to recognise K’miri when it was spoken.

 

            “Her own language, perhaps,” Wyldon suggested tensely, and they laid her down on a bedroll, next to a man with an arrow in his leg who could not stop screaming.

 

            “Mithros curse that archer,” Raoul said, with real fury.

 

            Wyldon grunted in agreement. “The only real fighter of the lot. Did some escape?”

 

            “Yes.” Raoul stood up, scrubbing his hands anxiously on his breeches. “I should go after them.”  


            Buri seized onto this piece of information as understandable, and told him that he should go, the idiot.

 

            “Uh.” Raoul looked down at her, plainly not understanding. He was stupid. She made perfect sense.

 

            “Go and do your job, Goldenlake,” Wyldon snapped. “We will look after Buri.”

 

            Raoul found some certainty within himself and nodded sharply, before turning away and bellowing orders. Buri wished he wouldn’t do that, it hurt her ears, and then she felt strong, calloused hands taking off her helmet, unbuckling her cuirass with gentle fingers and unlacing her jerkin. She jerked and cried out loud as the same hands cut at the leather of her jerkin, peeling it away from the place where all the pain was coming from, while a cool voice that she barely recognised any more hushed her, soothed her, but it didn’t help.

 

            “It must be poisoned,” an unfamiliar voice said. “She wouldn’t be so delirious so quickly if it wasn’t.”

 

            “What must we do?” the cool voice asked, calm as ice water.

 

            “Get it out,” the unfamiliar voice said grimly. “Get it out, and get her back to Corus, as quickly as possible. I don’t have the strength to fight this, it spreads through her so quickly – she’s as strong as any of the others, but she’s small. The poison doesn’t have so far to go before it reaches her brain. But we must get the arrow out _now_. I don’t have anything I can give her, I’m afraid poppy will react with the poison...”

 

            _Out_ Buri understood, and she sobbed something that even she couldn’t recognise. More pain? She felt like she would die now. More pain would kill her.

 

            “Buri. Listen to me. Buriram Tourakom. Listen.” The owner of the cool voice demanded her attention. “This arrow needs to come out. It will hurt, but if it does not come out, you will not heal. You will die. Do you understand? You will die. That would be a waste. I am not prepared to accept that. We can give you something to bite down on and we can promise it will be over quickly, and I will be here.”

 

            Buri searched frantically for Common, and found some. “Don’t go,” she sobbed, fingers clutching spasmodically at his chest.

 

            The owner of the cool voice – Wyldon. Yes. Wyldon. Cavall – shifted behind her to support her back and pin her arms against her sides, her head lolling back against his shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere.”

 

            Someone slipped a leather strap between her lips and she bit down obediently, tried to brace herself, knowing something bad was coming.

 

            “Do it,” Wyldon ordered. Someone cut into her flesh where she knew the arrow was and she sobbed, half-mad with pain, and pressed her head into the shoulder supporting it, turning her face into its owner’s neck. He had his head pressed against hers, giving her something to lean against, muttering urgently to her, praising her for her courage, promising her it would be over soon and he would make sure she got better and stopped hurting. She reached out for his words, tried to cling to them, but then something was wrenched from her flesh and she screamed out loud, the leather falling from her lips, and collapsed.

 

***

 

            “Buri? Oh, Horse Lords be thanked,” Thayet said.

 

            Buri groaned, and opened her eyes to the whitewashed coolness of the Healer’s Wing. “How do you know I’m awake before I’m awake? Gods, my shoulder aches. And I feel as weak as a kitten. Thayet, what did I do?”

 

            Thayet half-laughed. Her eyes were wet and red from crying. “You went out bandit hunting and got yourself shot with a poisoned arrow. That was a week ago. You frightened us all stupid.”

 

            “I remember being shot,” Buri admitted, and frowned. “He was on a rooftop. He grinned at me. Did they kill him?”

 

            “Yes,” Thayet said, and then paused and smiled waterily at Buri and hugged her tightly. “But everyone else who was shot with the arrows- Buri, they _died_. The healers didn’t treat them for poison quickly enough. Buri, I thought I was going to lose you. If Lord Wyldon hadn’t had the arrow taken out immediately and ridden with you all the way to Corus as if the hounds of the Wild Hunt were at his horse’s heels, I would have!”

 

            “Lord Wyldon?” Buri said, puzzled. “What did he have to do with it?”

 

            Thayet stopped, and stared at her. “You don’t remember? He said you were delirious, but...”

 

            “No,” Buri said, and frowned. Vague recollections were coming back - of being held tightly in someone’s arms, leaning against someone’s chest, ordered not to fall asleep but drifting away anyway, feeling safer and more protected than she had for months – but she couldn’t attach a name to a face. “I don’t remember at all.”

           


End file.
